#tmbd gurathin

[ghostcashewart]

"I had trained them too well to step past me in a situation like this, walking into a strange place, but Ratthi peered around my side and Gurathin stood on his tiptoes to see over my shoulder." - Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

i've finally drawn secunit's boys!!!!

[crabs-brencil]

another sketch spawned in the discord lmao

[rosewind2007]

Gurathin, my beloved

[oposssumsaucee]

Listen All Systems Red is so so funny from Gurathins perspective imagine you grew up with Space Socialism and was hired to go help some pal with science but you weren't allowed to go unless you rented AmaTeslas Torment Nexus Alexa Dot and then when you get there you find out a whole continent of people got annihilated by their Tourment Nexus rentals so you take a moment to check yours quickly and find out it already had disengaged its Don't Kill People box, the only thing you've ever been told prevented them from mass homiciding their clients, something that LITERALLY just happened to people you knew a day ago, and when you say to your fellow socialist doctors HEY I think our Tourment Nexus is fucked up and it's files said it killed dozens of people barely a year ago and we should probably get the hell away from it the same doctors are like look at what you're saying. You're hurting the Tourment Nexus' feelings. The Tourment Nexus is just a little construct who likes Netflix Gurathin stop antagonizing it on the plane ride.

[fascinatedfinch]

Murderbot September day 3: (Alternative prompt) “I don’t like you.” / “I know.”

[gafurtle]

Gurathin, Murderbot, and Personhood

I was really struck by the exchange between Gurathin & Ratthi in All Systems Red, which went something like this:

Ratthi: You have to think of it as a person! Gurathin: I do think of it as a person. An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.

And for the first book, Gurathin's attitude toward personhood really sets him off from the rest of the survey team. As soon as the others clock that Murderbot is a person, they immediately want to treat it like a human: inviting it to the crew quarters, having it ride in the crew portion of the shuttle, getting it to open up about its feelings...and they also assume that Murderbot desperately needs help and understanding, and that it must want to be treated like a human among other, kind humans. This script--which turns out to be not accurate for what Murderbot actually wants or needs--is part of why Murderbot takes off as soon as it can, and why Pin Lee and Mensah and the others are very ready to apologize and renegotiate their attitudes toward Murderbot when they meet again in Exit Strategy. "It's not like we don't know we messed up," as Pin Lee says.

So that's the rest of the team, but Gurathin is immediately different. Unlike the others, he doesn't assume that Murderbot wants to be embraced as a human by humanity. In fact, Gurathin goes the other direction and seems to think, "Well, if *I* had been continually abused and enslaved by humans and then managed to free myself, I think I would want to kill and hurt humans in turn, and I don't see why I would want to be snuggly friends with the first humans to not be horrible toward me." And so he keeps trying to needle Murderbot into revealing its "true" colors, and at one point point-blank asks Murderbot if it blames all humans for what happened to it.

The "kill all humans" script is also not accurate for Murderbot, of course, no more than the "Murderbot wants to cuddle with humans" script that the rest of the Survey Team is following is. But I appreciate that Gurathin does not equate personhood with "being just like us," and that he is cautious about Murderbot's potential for mass murder not because "that's just how SecUnits are," but because Gurathin thinks that's how a person might react to what Murderbot went through.

And while I'm on the Gurathin appreciation train, I also quite like a character who is kind but not nice, which I think sums him up pretty well. He is kind--like, he takes shifts watching over Murderbot when it needs to rebuild its memory, he stays around in Fugitive Telemetry when he knows Murderbot is going to be questioned by the police. As he himself puts it, "I'm not your enemy; I'm just cautious." At the same time, Gurathin isn't nice; while everyone else is trying to give Murderbot space & time, and very deliberately NOT asking it things lest it feel pressured or compelled to answer, Gurathin is out there being like, "Okay, but were you punished for the whole mass murder thing? Do you hate humans? What WERE you doing after you left?" [Contrast Pin Lee who very deliberately told Muderbot that it didn't need to tell her that.] I appreciate that Gurathin never treats Murderbot with kid gloves (and, for all Murderbot says Gurathin is an asshole, Gurathin is also never actually cruel toward Murderbot or else we as readers would not like him at all).

In the end, I think there's something innately affirming about the way Gurathin looks at Murderbot and thinks, "Yup. That's a person. And that doesn't mean we're going to like each other."

[sporadicartcomputer]

uh hi. i wanted to illustrate one of the introductary scenes for SecUnit's character, since that would go along well with this being kind of my first post here. i... think that makes some sense. i promise more Murderbot diaries fanart after this (calling it content feels icky)). (did I start overusing brackets becouse of these books? possibly).

and i hope i captured SecUnit freaking out while trying to keep its composure at the same time well. as weird as it sounds, i like seeing depictions of it being nervous, becouse this side of it is what got me to relate to it so much in the first place (besides the heavily implied neurodivergence. though i guess the two go hand in hand). examples: in the second panel of the second page i tried showing how Gurathin's words affected it by making the speech bubbles visually "choke" (?) it, though it kept its face straight. oh, and i made it look much shorter than it actually is to mirror the way it is feeling!! figuring out details like that was pretty fun

(i'm sorry for any inconsistencies and the messy colouring and linework, i have ADHD and i get incredibly bored when i spend time trying to make everything "perfect" and looking the same in each panel... )

[riseandfallofsecunit]

One thing that I think the murderbot community has tragically overlooked is that Gurathin canonically has a unibrow.

Fugitive Telemetry, Chapter Four, page 56: “…Gurathin asked, his big brow creased.”

[hellofriendhawke]

Fuck you.

[kug-the-carrot]

I find it really really funny that a lot of tmbd fandom have decided that, yeah, Gurathin is the token white guy. 90% of the time I look at fanart and I'm like I know exactly who that guy is, you just plucked the most introverted uncle from somebody's backyard bbq and put him in this picture like an inverse college brochure. It is my favorite thing

[crabs-brencil]

FUCKING LOOK AT THIS YOU GUYS!!!!!!

excuse me while i go scream

Art for night in the life by @crabs-brencil apparently I had major tmd/spiderverse feels so I had to draw their Gurathin design but in a spiderman type pose....

Pose from Posemaniacs. Color palette inspired from colormind.

[sentient-pineapple]

Contains strobe lights!!

So yk Gurathin's eye augments..

[ID 2D animation showing Ratthi knocking on a door labelled “Dr Gurathin”, from around the door are flashing rainbow lights and the muffled song caramelldansen can be heard. The scene changes to inside the room where Gurathin is sitting at a desk by a window. On the desk next to him is a pink sparkly drink. He turns in his chair, revealing his glowing rainbow eyes. He has crossed arms and a deadpan expression, which is zoomed in on. The scene cuts to Ratthi grinning, then to Gurathin who smiles a little bit, then back to Ratthi who is now wearing sunglasses and is surrounded by sparkles. The scene cuts back to the office where Ratthi is dancing in time to the music, swinging his lanyard around his neck, while gurathin sits in his chair looking amused]

[crabs-brencil]

on my bs again

[rosewind2007]

“Gurathin was the only loner, but he seemed to like being with the others. He had a small, quiet smile, and they all seemed to like him.”

All Systems Red, Martha Wells

Soon to be a TV series! With David Dastmalchian as Dr. Gurathin (augmented human)

[m00nymonster]

Promise Me

Prompt: anticipation

TRIGGER WARNING: character death, cancer

I paced outside the hallway of Mensah's bedroom, inside of which her children and partners were gathered. I couldn't handle the crowd, even with drones. The few I had brought with me flew around my head in a defensive pattern.

Out of all the ways for Mensah to die, I'd have never anticipated this. I had expected old age to take her. And frankly, I hadn't expected to see her die at all. The chances of me dying before her were statistically higher, with my job. But it would have been old age, for sure. A very long time from now.

No one expected pancreatic cancer.

By the time she'd complained of stomach pain, it was too late. Most cancers could be treated. It wasn't easy, but it was managable. If you caught it before stage four, anyway.

I kept pacing. I couldn't meet anyone's eyes. Ratthi and Gurathin were waiting outside with me, sitting on chairs dragged in from the living room for this purpose. Arada and Overse were murmuring to each other as they gripped hands, and Pin-Lee stared at the floor. I didn't care.

I wanted to fight something. I want to tear something's spine out. But you can't rip out cancer's lungs. You can just wait and watch as your favorite human leaves the hospital because the treatments didn't work, watch as she went home, watch as she climbed into her bed like it was a mountain and lay down to be comfortable. You can't rip cancer limb from limb as you watch your favorite human die by inches.

Farai and the rest slowly filtered out of the room.

"Not long now," she murmured. Ratthi ran a hand over his face. Gurathin stared holes into the carpet. Overse and Arada stopped whispering, and Pin-Lee finally looked up, tears in her eyes. They started to get up. Farai raised a hand.

"She wants SecUnit," she said. "You can go in after."

I stopped pacing. Farai waved at me, but I couldn't move.

"SecUnit? We don't have much time."

I stared at the door. It was rectangular, made of a smooth brown wood with a golden knob. No entryway had scared me more.

"Me?" I whispered. Farai nodded. I took a deep, shuddering breath and forced myself to open the door and step inside. The door shut behind me.

Mensah lay on the bed, surrounded by pillows, propped up to be as comfortable as possible. Her children had left little stuffed animals around her, and the tables were covered with flowers. She was pale, sickly, but her eyes still had the determined sheen I'd seen when she'd killed a SecUnit with a mining drill to protect me.

"SecUnit."

"Murderbot," I corrected. She smiled and nodded weakly.

"Murderbot. Sit down."

I sat in a chair next to her bed.

"Can I....?" She raised her hand. I hesitated, then gripped it tightly. She sighed.

"I remember the last time you held my hand."

I said nothing, just stared. She smiled at me and continued.

"I had no hope when they held me. Then you were there, and--and I knew there was a chance. You fought so hard to save me, and you almost died. Several times. You risked everything to protect me. And when you went on that survey with Amena...you did everything you could for her, too. When I learned about that, you have no idea how...upset I was. That you'd almost died." She coughed. I tightened my grip. "I want you to promise me something," she said.

"Anything."

"Take care of yourself."

I hadn't expected that.

"You throw yourself into danger, all the time. You don't care if you die. I do." She coughed again. "I want you to live a long, happy life. Understand?" She cocked her head, then gently lifted her free hand and brushed it against my face. It was wet.

"That's too hard," I whispered.

She nodded. "You're tough. You'll figure it out."

"I don't want to. I don't want you to die."

"We don't always get what we want, Murderbot." She sighed. "I wanted more time, too." She winced. "Promise me, Murderbot."

I was quiet for a whole four minutes and thirty seven seconds. "Okay," I said finally. "I promise."

She gave a relieved sigh. "Send in the others," she said. She smiled and released my hand. "And don't forget your promise. Live. For me."

I nodded, and quietly slipped away.

"She wants you," I said thickly at my humans outside, jerking my head as I closed the door. Ratthi jumped up. He stared at me, his expression soft.

"SecUnit..."

"I'll be downstairs," I said, and fled.

[garvet]

9. Augment